


Quid Pro Quo

by CrashDevil (cjdevlin19)



Series: Crash Into Me [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Past Sexual Assault, Pining, Post-Purgatory Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 17:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18921628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjdevlin19/pseuds/CrashDevil
Summary: Dean and Crash have been talking and texting, getting to know each other. When she asks about Purgatory, he asks for a personal story in return.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“Would you… Would you tell me about it? About Purgatory?”Dean licked his lips and leaned back on his bed. “Okay. Story for a story. You tell me something personal and I’ll tell you about Purgatory.”A sigh sent static through the speaker into his ear. “Dean, I don’t-”“Come on, Crash! ‘Quid pro quo, Clarice’. Tell me a story you’ve never told anybody else.”“The things I keep to myself are, generally, really not happy stories.”“And you think Purgatory was sunshine and sparkles?”





	Quid Pro Quo

**Story Warnings** : pining, angst, self-esteem issues,  ** _non-graphic description of sexual assault_**

* * *

Dean started slow, a couple of texts over a weekend where he and Sam weren’t too busy. He didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes or come on too strong and Sam kept reminding him that she was married, but he wanted to talk to her and let her know he was serious about being there for her.

By the time Sam completed the first Trial, though, they were texting every day and having heart to heart talks whenever there was time. They knew the broad strokes of each other’s whole lives and were both working to learn the little things about each other.

“Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a  _general_ lack of respect or the fact that he didn’t come from a military family or that his mom didn’t beat his ass to teach him respect when he was a kid but every time my dad calls him and he answers with ‘yeah?’, I wanna smash his teeth in.”

“That’d be an improvement on his teeth… and you  _know_ I’d kick his ass to teach him some respect for you.” Dean chuckled, running his hand through his hair. “It’s probably your military upbringing on your part. I answered the phone ‘yes, sir’ every time my dad called me ‘til the day he died.”

“Betcha Sam didn’t, though.”

“Nope. Not once his balls dropped and he started pickin’ fights with the old man.” Crash’s giggle filtering through the phone made Dean smile. “You know, why don’t we just leave it at Mike’s a dick and move on, huh?”

“Yeah, okay.” There was a moment of comfortable silence. “How’s Sam?”

“He says he’s all right, but he’s got that cough… Cas said he’s damaged at a… subatomic level. I’m tryin’ not to worry about it.”

“I’m sure he’ll be all right.”

“I know. I just… ya know, I spent a year in Purgatory just thinking about how I was gonna get back to him and we were gonna be okay again and… nothing’s been okay. It’s just one hit after another, ya know?”

“Yeah, I know. It’s gotta seem that way for you, but there are wins on your roster. So many of them.”

“Yeah, but all the big wins require big sacrifices. Like my soul or Sam’s soul or Cas’…  _everything_ or a trip to Purgatory.”

“Would you… Would you tell me about it? About Purgatory?”

Dean licked his lips and leaned back on his bed. “Okay. Story for a story. You tell me something personal and I’ll tell you about Purgatory.”

A sigh sent static through the speaker into his ear. “Dean, I don’t-”

“Come on, Crash! ‘Quid pro quo, Clarice’. Tell me a story you’ve never told anybody else.”

“The things I keep to myself are, generally,  _really_ not happy stories.”

“And you think Purgatory was sunshine and sparkles?”

There was a long silence and Dean considered laughing it off and starting to tell her about Purgatory, anyway. “When I was nineteen, I went to this small house party with my ex-boyfriend and his fiancee,” she started. “There weren’t a lot of people there and I only knew about four of the people who were there, but there was a  _lot_ of alcohol there and I was happy to make friends with Captain Morgan. I… can’t tell you how much I drank, but it was a lot.”

A pit formed in Dean’s stomach as he filled in the rest of the story in his head while she slowly recounted it. She was drunk, passed out, woke up to some guy she didn’t know on top of her. He felt bad for making her tell the story, but he wasn’t going to interrupt her, knowing it probably took a lot of courage to tell the story in the first place.

“I was so drunk. I-I got up to get water. I remembered hearing that water helps cut down on the hangover and I was gonna drink as much of it as I could stand.” Crash cleared her throat. “I was so drunk… I, uh, I was leaning against the fridge when my ex came in. He was a big guy, couple inches shorter than you but real into weightlifting when he wasn’t busy with his Nirvana cover band.”

_***Oh, shit. It’s worse.***_  Dean rubbed his hand down his face.

“He was getting cold feet about marrying Margo and wanted one last fling. He was drunk and high on cough meds and… one of his fiancee’s friends walked in while he was… She was this Amazonian chick, pulled him off of me… and started screaming at me when he stumbled out of the kitchen. I just… I fixed my skirt and went to explain to Margo. She was pregnant, so she was the only sober person in the house.”

“Oh, Crash.”

“She believed me. So did his brother, who started a fight with him. The cops were called and they Baker Acted him because he threatened to kill himself for breaking Margo’s heart like that. I left before the cops got there. I was drunk, underage, I didn’t want to get in trouble. Walked ten miles home with a ripped blouse on and half a bottle of rum in my purse.” She sighed. “Next day, he sobered up and… he denied it. He said it had to be a misunderstanding, he’d never put his hands on me, not now… he said, ‘just  _look_ at her’. Margo knew he was lying, but she was pregnant so she stayed with him and… I didn’t talk to them again after that.”

“You never filed?” Dean asked, quietly.

“Why? I mean… it wouldn’t have been worth the bullshit. Everyone asking why I was drunk, why I was alone with him… it’s just better to just… put it away and ignore it, ya know?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, I guess I understand. You… you never told anyone about it?”

“No. Only people know about it were in that house… and  _you_ , now. Mike doesn’t even know.” Crash cleared her throat again. “Quid pro quo, Dean. Purgatorio, vai.”

Dean sighed. He couldn’t  _not_ tell her now. “Well, Purgatory is where  _all_ of the monsters go when we gank ‘em. Werewolves, shifters, vampires, they’re all over there, so thousands of years worth of dead monsters and they’re all runnin’ around this seemingly endless woodscape and there’s nothing to do except kill each other.” He scoffed. “And they were definitely interested in killin’ me and Cas. Especially the Leviathans, they were all about takin’ down the people who sent them back to Purgatory.”

He licked his lips and rolled over onto his side, adjusting the way the phone sat on his ear. “Cas disappeared almost immediately. I spent the majority of a year lookin’ for him, scouring Purgatory for any sign of him. There’s this cajun vamp named Benny, fought by my side as we looked for Cas. He helped me find an out, some secret door God put in just for humans who get stuck over there. Benny had my back. He’s… He never wanted to  _be_ a monster. It wasn’t something he chose. But, damn, he’s… He’s good with a blade.” He clicked his teeth. “Anyway, Purgatory is just… it’s primal. There’s no pretense or fakeness. It’s ‘Kill or Be Killed’, ‘Eat or Be Eaten’. You don’t have to think about anything except how to stay alive, where your blade’s gonna end up next.”

“That sounds…” Dean holds his breath as he waits for the end of that sentence. She can’t possibly understand. No one besides Benny and Cas could, but he didn’t want her to be put off by the characterization he’d given her. “…pure.” He sat up at the word, an electric shock of a feeling going through him. “Just you and the fight, your buddy at your side and a trail of bodies behind you. It’s… almost poetic.”

“Yeah.” Dean nodded. “I… said something really similar to Benny once. He agreed… said I probably enjoyed it too much… that  _he_ shoulda enjoyed it more.”

“I’d probably die pretty quickly over there, but… I dunno… might be better than here.”

“Don’t say that. I’m sure you could hack it.”

She giggled again, but it was more of a self-deprecating laughter. “Dean, I couldn’t outrun a single thing over there. I couldn’t defend against any fucking thing. I doubt I’d make it more than an hour before something was having the snack of a lifetime.”

“You  _are_ a snack… but not for monsters.” Dean could imagine her cheeks turning pink, her pushing her thumbnail under one of her two front teeth and chewing on it… just a little, not enough to tear the nail, but enough to occupy her hands and lips and distract herself. He’d picked up on so many of her mannerisms in the short time he spent in her physical presence. He  _knew_ her.

“Oh, shut up. I am not.”

“Yeah, you are,” he argued, but he decided not to push it further as he heard the rumble of the Impala pulling into the motel parking lot. “Hey, I gotta go. Sam’s back with lunch.”

“Okay. Text you later.”

“You better. Bye, Crash.”

“Bye, Dean.”

Dean hit ‘End Call’ and shoved the phone in his pocket as he stood. Sam walked in with a paper bag that smelled like grease and set it on the table as he kicked the door shut. “Talking to Crash again?”

“No.” Sam raised an eyebrow. “Maybe. Shut up.” Dean pulled the bag to him and grabbed a burrito out of it, unwrapping the foil. “Nothin’ wrong with talkin’ to her.”

“Nothing wrong with talking,” Sam confirmed, pulling his own burrito out of the bag and sitting at the table. “As long as you’re just  _talking_ , not flirting or filling her head with bad ideas.”

Dean sighed. “‘Bad ideas’, Sam? Like what?”

“Like leaving her husband or cheating on him.” Sam coughed and cleared his throat as Dean glared across the small, round table at him. “Knowing that she’s got a kid and a future planned and that you’re a hunter, Dean…” Sam let his words fall off as he took a bite of his burrito.

“It would probably be the best thing that ever happened to her if her marriage fell apart and that’s fuckin’ sad as hell, ain’t it?” Dean rolled his eyes. “But I’m not gonna inspire or cause her marriage to end. I’m not a homewrecker, Sam. I’m not you when you were soulless.”

Sam sighed and shook his head. “I’m not saying-”

“She needs someone she can talk to, that’s all.”

“Oh, and you’ll talk to her but you won’t talk to me?”

Dan rolled his eyes again and reached into the bag for packets of hot sauce. “Dude, I am  _fine_ about Cas. Crash and I haven’t even talked about that. We talk about her dickbag husband and her awesome kid and her parents and  _you_ , but we haven’t talked about Cas… because I’m fine about it.”

“Sure, you are.”

“Eat me, Sam,” Dean snapped, pouring hot sauce over the burrito and shoving as much into his mouth as he could fit.

Sam just shook his head and focused on his own food. They were both holding back so he wouldn’t press lest Dean press him about how he felt.

Dean’s eyes were unfocused as his mind slipped back to thinking about Purgatory, about how long Crash would really have survived over there, if he’d have been able to keep her safe.  _ ***Maybe with Benny’s help.***_  He shook his head.  _ ***She’s gotta be stronger than she thinks she is to put up with everything she does.***_  Dean looked up to see Sam staring at him. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t-”

“Stop thinking so loud.” Dean stood, grabbing his keys off the table and walking out of the motel room with his burrito in hand. “Dick,” he muttered as he climbed into the Impala and leaned against the door to finish eating.


End file.
